All you need to know about life at the King's Summer School and London this summer

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Building on the success of the Diet and Health symposium in 2016, King’s Summer Programmes is arranging aSummer Symposium on Healthspan and Wellness, taking place on Tuesday 13 and Wednesday 14 June 2017, in partnership withUnilever R&D Bangalore.

Speaking about the symposium, King’s College London convenor Dr Richard Siow says, “The symposium has been developed through a research collaboration between King’s College London, and Unilever, the global-leading consumer goods company with world-class industrial research facilities in India, the UK, the Netherlands, the USA and China. King’s has a long and distinguished pioneering tradition in health and nutrition-related research.”

This symposium will enable participants to appreciate the molecular, biochemical and physiological basis of healthy ageing through academic and industrial research insights to better define lifestyles for maintaining healthy ageing in different populations. The unique masterclass format provides an opportunity for academic experts, early career investigators, health professionals and industrial research scientists to share ideas and develop unique insights. Discussion of up-to-date topics informed by recent experimental scientific research, will enable participants to consider both the biological processes and the social impact for underlying local and global issues in healthspan and wellness.

During the two-day symposium, there will be a number of talks taking place around the subjects of healthspan and wellness. You can find a draft timetable of the programme on this webpage. Dr Siow and Professor Wolfgang Maret from King’s College London, along with keynote speakers namely Professor Uptal Tatu from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, Dr Colin Jamora from the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore and scientists from Unilever R&D Bangalore, have a wealth of research expertise in the field of healthspan and wellness which will provide participants with unique insights in these fields.

Amy Kanagaratnam, a post-graduate student who attended last year’s symposium says, “I would definitely recommend this symposium to future students, it is a great experience and networking has allowed me to identify future job opportunities that may be available in a well-known company such as Unilever.”

If you are interested in attending the symposium, you have untilFriday 9 June 2017to register. The fee for the two-day symposium is £86 (approximately Rs. 7,000) and you can registerhere.

New to the London Undergraduate Summer School this year, is our Understanding the Common Law module. You’ll have the opportunity to analyse and critically discuss key concepts relating to common law.

Module tutor, Dr Elin Weston, says that ‘this course will be an opportunity to gain an understanding of how the common law operates – for example, what parts of a judgement are binding? – and to think critically about issues like: should judges make law? And if a system of legal rules is ever-evolving, can it ever offer any certainty?

The common law has had a profound impact on many legal systems throughout the world, and continues to exert a major influence across a wide range of areas of law including business law, contract law and the law relating to human rights and civil liberties.”

Studying a law module this summer not only gives you the chance to enhance your knowledge on a chosen subject, it also allows you to consider career opportunities that may be available to you in the future.

Last summer King’s Summer Programmes collaborated with the Dickson Poon School of Law and Career Services to run two career panels for students enrolled on the law modules. These panels were moderated by King’s academics from the School, and the panellists included professionals and King’s alumni. See the below video for a glimpse at these law career panels.

If you think studying one law module isn’t enough, choose to study with us for both sessions. In Session Two you’ll have the opportunity to study one of two excellent Law modules; Criminology & Criminal Justice and International Commercial Law. Or if you want to study a module in a different subject area, take a look at our What Can I Study page for a list of all available modules.

Please note the Understand the Common Law module will only be running during Session One (26 June- 14 July 2017) of the Undergraduate Summer School. You can submit an application now and you will have until 31 May 2017 to do so. For more information about the programme please visit our website. If you have any questions about the Summer School, please email us. Alternatively you can send us a message on Facebook or Twitter.

You studied International Relations and Criminology and Criminal Justice at King’s College London’s summer school, how did you find your experience?

My experience at the King’s College London’s Summer School was a life changing one and is something that I cherish to date and would continue to do so for all times to come. I thoroughly enjoyed both the courses that I’d undertaken, which were International Relations and Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Studying International Relations with such a demanding module strengthened my intellectual faculties and gave me an expert insight regarding understanding complex International situations to find reasonable and fair solutions. On the other hand the subject matter and teaching of Criminology and Criminal Justice helped me grasp issues that plague our society and how they can be dealt with effectively. Apart from academic learnings, I’d also want to highlight that the sort of holistic and diverse environment that the summer school provided me with to interact with students from all across the globe was definitely an experience of a lifetime.

Overall, after the completion of the summer school I found myself way richer in terms of knowledge and insight; something that I feel has made me evolve and wise in every way.

Apart from writing your novel, what else have you been working on since your time at King’s has ended?

I studied at The King’s College London Summer School in the year 2014 and ever since then two years have passed and these have been the busiest two years of my life.

Apart from comprehensively working on my debut novel, I undertook an Accreditation course in Mediation from the Australian Disputes Centre, Sydney in 2015. The completion of the course made me an accredited International Mediator which also means that currently I happen to be one of the youngest mediators of the world. Owing to this, I was bestowed with an opportunity to intern with Holman Webb Lawyers, Sydney in 2015 which was definitely a brilliant experience and a very augmenting one.

Then I got selected to intern at the Ministry of External Affairs, India in September 2015 wherein all my learnings from the course of International Relations came in handy. Then in March 2016, I interned as a Judicial Clerk at the Punjab and Haryana High Court which too was a very fulfilling experience not only as a Law student but also as human being who believes in social justice.

Your novel Laiza- Sometimes the end is only a beginning, was released in July, can you provide us with a brief summary on what the book is about?

LAIZA- Sometimes the End is only a beginning is a fiction novel based in real time, of about 95,000 words approximately expressing all the emotions and dilemmas on a wide spectrum of feelings. It is deep, engaging and intriguing. Laiza represents the plight of a million women who may fall, get injured, but never back down.

It is a story that would introduce the world to the dark side of disasters; it’s a story that would inspire every reader to fight in life, no matter what. It’s a story that needs to be heard. The main themes of the book are Feminism, hope, human trafficking, Indo-Nepal relations, Nepali culture and self discovery.

Did your travels to London and your study at King’s inspire your writing in any way?

I personally feel that we are all a culmination of the experiences we have and the travels we make! So my travels to London would continue to be a part of my being and personality forever, irrespective of the fact that they’re mentioned in my writings or not.

Moving on to the inspiration I sought from my study at King’s. Issues of Feminism and Human Trafficking along with Indo-Nepal relations which are the main themes of my book are basically figments of International Relations. The book is very intense and hence it runs on a consistent background of Indo-Nepal relations and how they affected my protagonist’s life. Every detail about their ups and downs in the year 2015 has been mentioned in the book and analysis of true events to include them in my story was definitely the pedestal wherein study of International Relations helped.

Apart from this, I personally believe that I am a very positive person and for me the toughest aspect of writing ‘Laiza’ was to characterise antagonists! I believe I could do so along with providing every antagonist a back story as to why they became what they became because of being a Criminology student.

So to be very honest, I haven’t used my study and travels to London in the most direct ways to write the book, but they certainly have helped me at various points to twist, turn and knit the story with no loopholes so left to be plugged in the end.

For those student’s at King’s who are budding novelists what one piece of advice would you like to give them?

If you want to write and that’s what you’ve been wanting to do ever since, then START NOW. As Hemingway says, the first draft of everything is bad, so don’t let that dampen you, instead seek inspiration and go on to liberate not just yourself but also the one whose life would change after he/she experiences your work.

And please, don’t ever let anyone tell you that you aren’t worth it, Because you certainly are. Most importantly Free yourself from your own limitations before anything else.

During Session One of the Undergraduate Summer School we offered, for the first time, a number of informative law career panels to some of our students. With the collaboration of the Careers and Employability service at King’s, we were able to invite a whole host of interesting professionals to speak with our students about different career paths for law students.

Dr Alexander Heinz, Senior Tutor for the Summer Programmes team felt that, “the career panels were much enjoyed by the students… panel members and the students had engaging conversations about career paths and were highly interested in receiving advice from representatives of a range of legal professions.”

In Session One our law students were treated to an exciting panel facilitated by Professor Alexander Türk. He is Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes and is also Director of the Postgraduate Diploma/MA in EU Law (by Distance Learning). Additionally Professor Türk is General Editor of LexisNexis EU Tracker.

Professor Türk was joined on this panel by Dr Nigel Spencer a Global Director of Learning and Development at international law firm Reed Smith LLP and Abdullah El Maghraby a Second-Seat Trainee at Baker & Mckenzie, sitting in the Banking department. Two King’s College London Alumni also joined the panel. Jenny Galloway is an Associate in a Financial Services Litigation team and Daniel Jacobs is a Trainee Solicitor at Norton Rose Fulbright.

The law careers panel in Session Two was facilitated by Professor Eva Lomnicka from the King’s College London Dickson Poon School of Law. Eva Lomnicka obtained an MA and LLB from Cambridge University, qualified as a barrister and then came to King’s as a lecturer in 1975.

Professor Lomnicka was joined on the panel by Sarah Thorner, a Legal and Business Affairs Executive at Fremantle Media, who spoke about what her experience of being a lawyer in the media industry. Also on the panel was King’s alumni and Associate at Freshfields, Tom Hingley, who spoke about what it is like working in intellectual property law. Imogen Holmgren and Lucy Crittenden, both from Reed Smith, joined the law panel. Imogen is an Associate at the company and discussed her role working on private equity transactions & M&A agreements. Lucy decided that she wanted to focus her career on people development, so she’s now a graduate Recruitment Manager at Reed Smith.

These career panels were a great way for students studying EU Law, International Commercial Law and Criminology and Criminal Justice to ask professionals real career advice about their chosen fields. And if you are thinking about studying Law at King’s College London next summer please see our website.